I’ve been working on this on and off for the past few years.
ACE is an Amstrad/Schneider CPC emulator. The CPC is an 8-bit computer from the 80s (and early 90s). ACE is an emulator for it, originally written by OffseT for MorphOS. I porteed the code to Haiku, complete with native GUI.
The emulator has lot of nice features, including a disassembler, memory explorer/editor, etc. It is also one of the most accurate emulators available for the machine and does not need a very powerful computer to run.
Today I released version 1.9.0 (still beta). The main changes are new windows for Amstrad Plus features debugging and keyboard emulation, and a lot of bugfixes both in the engine and the Haiku UI.
Let me know if you find any problems in it, meanwhile I’ll be working on merging the next 10 releases from the upstream MorphOS version.
I had not updated this topic in a while, but my work on porting ACE continues. Yesterday I published version 1.15.0 (still beta). Hope you find it useful (even if this is maybe only useful for a quite specific subset of Haiku users).
Note, it is still a 32bit only application due to limitations in the original MorphOS version I’m basing my work on. I think this has been fixed in later versions of ACE (1.22 and 1.23 are already available for MorphOS) and I will try to provide a 64bit build when I have caught up with the MorphOS version.
It looks awesome - I am looking forward to the 64 bit version… I never had a CPC but remember often playing with them at the department store - I always thoght they looked more futuristic than my TRS-80 CoCo 2. Have enjoyed CPC emulation on my Windoze box, so really looking forward to taking it for a spin under Haiku.
The emulator is distributed with the needed system ROMs to run the Amstrad BASIC. Amstrad has given an authorization to use their ROMs in emulators and redistribute them for this usage.
If you want to try some games, there are modern games that are free and available for download, for example:
There were various small problems in my personal and professional life at the time which involved moving to two different flats in the course of the same year, and not having time to assemble the albireo boards, so I passed the unassembled boards and components on to someone else who offered to take over the assembly work. Then we found a bug in the UART chip we were using, and we had to identify a replacement chip. Then the replacement chip became obsolete and the manufacturer stopped producing it so we had to buy it from remaining stocks. Then my colleague ran into some problems of its own, including having no space in his flat to install a CPC comfortably to test the boards. He also had hardware issues with his CPC. Then it was lockdown and he didn’t have access to the equipment at his workplace that he planned to use for assembling the boards.
I am glad that I did not do this as a kind of kickstarter and accept the payments in advance because I would be in an uncomfortable situation.
I hope that the current owner of the boards and components will resume assembly someday. Or that we will meet again somehow and he gives the things back to me so I can resume assembling them myself. Until then, production is on indefinite hold.
Thanks for the explanation. I remember reading some of this on cpcwiki.eu. I was reminded of it because I see that ACE now emulates albireo. Perhaps I should get a board made and produce one myself if I can find the parts.
My work on ACE continues and today I published version 1.22.0. This is the first version with support for 3rd party plugins. In ACE download you can find the SDK if you want to make your own plugins.
I am now only two versions behind the MorphOS release of ACE. But after I’m done with that I still need to port all the plugins as well. Then I can move on to other projects
Added preferences window to configure scriptable events.
Added new AREXX commands to directly access CRTC and PSG registers.
Added support for new chunks in snapshots (DSCA, DSCB, ROMS et TAPE).
Minor fix in PPI emulation of Amstrad Plus (AsT/Impact).
Minor fix in PSG emulation (Zik/Futurs’).
Preferences windows of ACEpansion plugins are now automatically enabled or disabled by ACE depending on their state.
Some fixes in various windows.
Speed optimisation in real time windows update mecanism when they are a lot of symbols.
Internal fixes so that ACE can now be compiled for AmigaOS 3.x (no public version planned yet).
This is also the first version available for 64-bit Haiku. You can get it as usual from http://ace.cpcscene.net. Let me know if you run into problems with it!
Oh my word… The Amstrad 6128 was my first “real” computer.
So many memories wrapped up in peeking and poking, trying to crack unlimited lives in all those old games.
